Much effort is presently focused toward providing distributed processing in computer networks. Distributed processing provides improved efficiency in networks by balancing loads between computers that are congested and those which have spare capacity. Users might, for example, offload particularly time consuming tasks, such as text formatting or floating point calculations, from their home computers to computers specially adapted for some tasks.
A number of systems presently provided process sharing between their computers. The LOCUS system, described by G. Popek et al in "A Network Transparent High Reliability Distributed System, Proceedings of ACM-SIGOPS 8th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, December 1981, pages 169-177, conditions a network of computers to simulate a single virtual computer. It does this, in part, by requiring that all files have a unique network name regardless of the network computer on which they reside. This technique, while successful, undesirably sacrifices much of the autonomy of individual network computers in many cases.
C. Antonelli et al describe another computer sharing arrangement in "SDS/NET--An Interactive Distributed Operating System", IEEE COMPCON, September 1980, pages 487-493. The University of California at Berkeley provides a form of remote computer sharing in its software called Berkeley Software Distribution 4.2. A system called Altos-net is described by P. Kavaler and A. Greenspan in "Extending UNIX to Local-Area Networks", Mini-Micros Systems, September 1983. A system called Uux is described by D. Nowitz and M. Lesk in "Implementation of a Dial-up network, of UNIX Systems", IEEE COMPCON, September 1980, pages 483-486. These systems, however, have the undesirable characteristic that each network computer sees only its own file system. This menas that the result of executing a process may be dependent upon the computer upon which the process is executed. That is, a process executed locally on a log-in computer of a user may produce an answer different from that which might be produced were the process executed on another network computer.